Oooooh ... how one's words come back to bite :-)
I really did start to do this ... and then "stuff" came up and I got distracted (sob sob) .... maybe I can start this up again as part of my New Year's resolution (but not tonight -- I need a beer tonight :-)

This was the first holiday season in which I lost weight. The secret for me is to drastically curtail wine consumption. This also tends to reduce appetite (what's the point of eating if not accompanied by wine?).
In a bit I will plateau, and if I want to resume the decline I need to get out and walk, but I think, not to New Jersey. Mr. Richard Feder advised against this.

You should try walking across America like this guy.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/maxs-cool-beans-blog/4373404/I-m-going-to-walk-across-America-
I'm sure he lost weight. I heard they had big celebration last week when he reached New Jersey.

"That ship has sailed."
LOL! I really doubt this is associated with caloric intake. Remember, correlation does not imply causation. More likely it is related to the winter solstice. At this time of the year, the earth is closest to the sun. Now it is also the coldest time of the year due to the earth's tilt. Ergo because it is cold, we tend to turn our bodies towards the sun to capture its warmth. However, the sun being closer this time of year, it exerts an additional gravitational force on our belly (remember 1 over r-squared) which is facing said sun. This pulls our belly towards the sun much like the tidal effect, and causes clothes not to fit as well for a month or two either side of the winter solstice. In fact it is indeed interesting that this article is posted today, the day on which the earth is closest to the sun (today being the perihelion, a mere 91,402,560 miles away--as the crow flies) By the time summer arrives, the effect will be greatly lessened. If the earth's orbit were more circular, like that of Neptune or Venus, we would never have this problem.
Q.E.D.

Thanks for reminding me about this -- I tried it 2 or 3 years ago and it was working well for me -- but then I "fell off the wagon" as it were ... it's so easy to put the weight on, yet so hard to take it off again...

Max, you might want to try the Hackers Diet.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/
It's nothing fancy, just the standard calories in minus calories out but the thing that made it work for me was the tracking method which only takes a couple minutes a day (and maybe a few more minutes at the end of the month if you want to print out fancy graphs of your progress.)
I'm almost down to the weight I was in my mid 20s which I thought I'd never see again...
Good luck on your weight loss...